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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28463796">Adrenaline</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_is_chaotic_good/pseuds/cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories'>cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories (cthulhu_is_chaotic_good)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz, Alex Rider - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(I mean do you have to ask), Gen, Is Alex Rider an Adrenaline Junkie?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:13:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,424</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28463796</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_is_chaotic_good/pseuds/cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex wasn't addicted to adrenaline, he told himself. He wasn't. </p><p>And if he told himself that often enough, perhaps he'd believe it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Adrenaline</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mrs. Jones was forced into retirement less than two years after Blunt was given a swift exit. Alex couldn’t say he was surprised. Mrs. Jones had, along with the other people in senior levels of the British intelligence field, allowed her most secret agent to have his face plastered across newspapers all over the country. That should have been the first sign that intelligence agencies were falling behind on facing the dangers that confronted the country. It wasn’t just Mrs. Jones who had been kindly told to find another way to occupy her time, from what Alex had heard. Not that he heard much. Although the past two years he had mostly been working with MI6 on his own terms – whatever that meant – he was still only sixteen, and most of his fellow agents ignored him.</p><p>Before she left, Mrs. Jones called Alex to her office. He wasn’t sure what to expect when he arrived, but it wasn’t a gift.</p><p>Alex took the small, wrapped box awkwardly. “Thanks,” he mustered. The box had some weight to it; perhaps it was a watch? “I didn’t get you anything.”</p><p>“I put something on it,” Mrs. Jones said. “It reminded me of you. You should listen to it if you have the time.”</p><p>“I will,” Alex said, not certain if it was some sort of code. “Enjoy retirement. Try not to drink too many cocktails.”</p><p>She smiled at that, almost sadly, and shook her head. “No, I won’t. Take care, Alex. And I am sorry, you know, that you were dragged into this.”</p><p>Later, after their brief last encounter had ended and once he was finally home and finished studying, Alex unwrapped the box. Inside was a small silver iPod, with a pair of white standard-issue headphones. Alex examined the iPod, but didn’t see anything suspicious about it. Although as Smithers had proven, just because a device didn’t look suspicious didn’t mean it wasn’t a gadget.</p><p>Still, a couple of days later and after poking and prodding away, Alex had to admit that it seemed the iPod was just what it claimed to be: a small iPod, with only one podcast downloaded to it.</p><p>He planned to listen to the podcast that was on it during his run that morning. So, he plugged his headphones in, once he’d got his trainers on, and pressed play on the podcast.</p><p>There was only one episode on his device. <em>The Rush of Addiction. </em>Bemused, and half thinking that Mrs. Jones had finally joined his classmates in thinking he did drugs, Alex pressed play, and began his run.</p><p>The first few minutes were regular banter between the two cohosts – one a female doctor, and the other a male radio host popular in the morning circuits. And then the doctor began to monologue, filling in the audience on that episode’s focus.</p><p>
  <em>Today, our episode begins with a question. Or rather, a series of questions. What could cause a person to dance on the edge of a roof, or another to scale a cliff without equipment? What motivates an individual to dive into shark infested waters, or attempt to photograph a lion in the wilderness? </em>
</p><p>Insanity, Alex decided, as he started his way towards the local park. Definitely insanity.</p><p>
  <em>Well, it’s simple, Philip: the secret is addiction. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Addiction to drugs? I’ve tried some in my day, and I don’t think I ever tried to get up close and personal with a lion. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Not drugs, no. This may even be more dangerous, for the people it afflicts. Addiction to adrenaline.</em>
</p><p>The podcast continued for some time. Alex listened to the whole thing, too focused on making sure he wasn’t run over and didn’t knock into any mom’s pushing to roll his eyes.</p><p>Great. Mrs. Jones did think he was on drugs, of sort, but the natural sort. Now, supposedly, Alex had an adrenaline addiction. What else was new?</p><p>
  <em>Now Philip, you may want to know how this works. It’s pretty simple, when boiled down the basics. Sometimes people find themselves in situations that trigger a crisis response – a ‘fight or flight’ response, if you will. In those times where a person is confronted with a scary situation, how it works is that the adrenal glands start to act up, and they secrete a hormone called adrenaline into the blood stream.</em>
</p><p>Except Alex wasn’t addicted to danger.</p><p>Yes, some of the examples stated at the beginning of the episode hit slightly too close to home – diving with sharks was a memory he didn’t wish to repeat, in particular.</p><p>And yes, he’d done quite a few dangerous stunts over the past few years. Some of them while at minimum thousands of meters in the air.</p><p>But he wasn’t addicted. He didn’t like danger; it just came with the territory.</p><p>
  <em>The moment adrenaline hits the bloodstream, certain things start to trigger. Now, the exact symptoms vary on the person and situation, but common symptoms include a person’s heart rate increasing, rapid breathing, sweetening, senses going into overdrive, and often, a lack of perception of pain. That last one is why you’ll hear instances of people getting into something like a bad car crash and doing all they can to get out of a nearly crushed car, only to get out and realize they’re all sorts of scraped up, or, and I apologize to our sensitive listeners, that a hand is dangling nearly unattached from an arm.</em>
</p><p>The thunderstorm that night was the loudest it had been in a while in the Chelsea neighborhood. Jack was already asleep, so Alex couldn’t find an excuse to get her to watch a movie with him while he pretended the outside world didn’t exist.</p><p>Outside the door, there was another flash of lightning. Alex flinched, already expecting the worst.</p><p>The thunder was a gunshot to the head.</p><p>He clutched his cover, pretending he wasn’t, and felt the sweat beading down his neck while his heart raced.</p><p>It wasn’t fair that he’d gone through all this just to end with a crippling fear of fireworks and thunderstorms, as if he were either a frightened puppy or five years old. And at least if he were five years old, he could cling to an adult and no one would think it was odd.</p><p>No, Alex decided miserably, he didn’t crave this. He was most certainly <em>not </em>addicted to danger.</p><p>
  <em>Now, Lauren, I have a question. These symptoms are normal, aren’t they? People don’t just have these symptoms and then realize that they have an addiction to danger?</em>
</p><p>He’d agreed to stay on with MI6 after Nightshade for a reason – they needed him. He wished they didn’t. Wished they were more competent, and that the adult agents they employed didn’t tend to end up with a bullet in their head from highly trained assassins or cut into pieces by razor wire or beheaded in small, war-torn countries.</p><p>It was a choice he had been given, and Alex had done the right thing for the nation. For the world, even. Who knew how many millions of people would be dead without him?</p><p>“Mr. Rider?” the teacher called. From her voice, it wasn’t the first time she’d called his name.</p><p>Alex looked up, guilt written across his face. “Yes?”</p><p>“Are you with us?”</p><p>“Um, sorry. Just daydreaming. What did you ask?” Alex asked, knowing his teacher wouldn’t remark on it. When Alex was in class, it was clear enough that some of his teachers had given up on him. Not that Alex wasn’t trying – wasn’t working overnight, sometimes, to catch up on everything he missed when he was gone on his missions.</p><p>The teacher sighed, then, with a pained expression, repeated her request. “I asked you how to conjugate the next verb on the board.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Alex said, before giving the correct conjugation. The class moved on, and Alex, determined not to drift off again, decided to dive back into Spanish with his full attention.</p><p>After all, he’d saved all the schools in London at one point. He may as well use the system to continue his education.</p><p>
  <em>Of course, Philip, you’re right, these are normal responses. And when people have these symptoms, it’s generally termed an ‘adrenaline rush’, which is a normal reaction that people have for all sorts of reasons. But the purpose of an adrenaline rush is that the body is telling itself that it will need to fight or take flight, and focus only on that. And the brain does quite a lot of complicated thinking at a chemical level while all of this is happening. When the situation has passed, the adrenal glands will stop producing adrenaline, and the body will return to whatever normalcy it had before. Which may not be much – regular listeners will remember how, a few episodes back, we talked about how bodies are almost always acting up in one way or another.</em>
</p><p>“You alright?” Tom asked, glancing up from the game they were both in.</p><p>“Yeah,” Alex said with a forced smile, suppressing the pain he was feeling. They were at Tom’s to shoot zombies, not to listen to Alex complain. “Let’s keep focused. I need us to get the newest achievement before James does, or he’ll never stop bragging.”</p><p>And really, the injury wasn’t that bad. It might not even scar. It was just a light scratch across his wrist from the razor wire fence he’d needed to climb over to escape the hyenas. He hadn’t even come that close to dying, this time.</p><p>“It’s a bit hot in here, isn’t it?” Tom looked at the long-sleeved shirt Alex was wearing, somewhat pointedly.</p><p>“Nah, I’m alright,” Alex said. “Feels a bit cold to me, anyway.”</p><p>
  <em>Now, we know that this episode isn’t just about adrenaline itself. It is about adrenaline addiction, very specifically. I just said, moments ago, that adrenaline rushes are a normal reaction to perceived danger that the body goes through. But for some individuals, an adrenaline rush is more than the body taking note of a situation. For some individuals, the rush is a thrill.</em>
</p><p>Alex clung to the rooftop, hoping with all his might that his backup would get there in the next three minutes. After three minutes, he wasn’t sure he could hold on much longer. And it was a long, long fall to the ground.</p><p>At least now, under new supervision, his backup usually showed up when requested.</p><p>His arms burned and he was ready to collapse by the time his fellow agent reached the edge of the roof and hauled him up.</p><p>“What happened to Debiers?” the other agent asked him.</p><p>“He dropped dead,” Alex replied, glancing off the building at the ground far below.</p><p>
  <em>Lauren, that sounds quite dangerous.</em>
</p><p>“Am I addicted to danger?” Alex asked, without preamble, when he caught up with Ben in the park after a particularly hard work out session.</p><p>Ben stuttered for a moment, before asking, “Why do you ask?”</p><p>Judging from Ben’s face, the answer wasn’t an obvious no.</p><p>
  <em>Philip, it is. Adrenaline addiction is, in some ways, quite similar to a dependency on drugs or alcohol. What happens is that the need for danger becomes compulsive, and those who crave it start to seek out activities that they know may be harmful just so that they can seek that rush. And we have a name for those who engage in such activities. A few names, actually. Daredevil is one. Thrill-seekers is another. And then there’s the term ‘adrenaline junkie’, which really hearkens back to the fact that addiction is addiction, regardless of whether it’s for drugs, alcohol, adrenaline, or a behavioral addiction such as gambling disorder.</em>
</p><p>The rumors at school that he was a junkie weren’t true, and by now the teachers seemed mostly to believe it. He was doing well in his classes, finally. Far better than he would be doing if he was taking drugs every day.</p><p>The problem wasn’t getting the teachers to believe it. The problem was all the rumors passed between his classmates.</p><p>James told him before practice one day that he even looked like a junkie, with the sunken eyes and random bruising.</p><p>It wasn’t Alex’s fault he wasn’t sleeping through the night anymore. Besides, he was leaving for another mission soon. If there was one advantage of being run rugged all day every day on his missions, it was that at least he finally slept when the missions were over.</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, not a pleasant term, is ‘adrenaline junkie’. I can say I understand it though. Anyone who’s willing to risk those activities you mentioned at the beginning is dealing with a lot more blind addiction to danger than I can have ever claimed to have. Now, Lauren, before we get to listener questions on last week’s episode, you have to give me hope. Is there a treatment for this addiction? Tell me there is.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Absolutely, there is a treatment. Now, treatment is –</em>
</p><p>Alex paused the episode.</p><p>He’d replayed it three times already that night, while he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.</p><p>By now, he knew what Lauren would say. But he didn’t want to hear it. Because for the ten minutes that she went over the steps to rehabilitation, stressing all the while that addiction was, for some, permanently a struggle, he knew in his heart that he would never take any of the steps she talked about.</p><p>He wasn’t an adrenaline addict, anyway. He knew himself, and he knew that every single time he’d placed himself in danger, it was to help someone. It wasn’t for some reckless thrill like the doctor and radio host were insinuating – like Mrs. Jones was insinuating, by giving him this episode of the podcast. Like Tom had insinuated when they went camping on the cliffs, and Tom got worried that Alex was too close to the edge.</p><p>Being an agent was different than someone walking on a tightrope between a burning building and the roof of safety just for thrills. If Alex wanted thrills, he’d go to the party Tom had invited him to, and try to hit on Aisha. Flirting was dangerous enough for Alex. There was no need to stare down giant predatory cats for <em>that </em>extreme sport.</p><p>Restless, Alex reached for the iPod, and pressed the rewind button. He watched the minutes of the podcast rewind, to 4 minutes and 35 seconds in, just when Lauren started to the introduce the concept of adrenaline addiction, yet again.</p><p>This podcast didn’t describe him. The situations were entirely different.</p><p>Alex pressed play.</p>
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